What would Tipper Gore say?
After the announcement of their split, the swirling rumors of affairs (gay and straight), and an incident with a masseuse, we thought the stories of Al Gore’s sexual escapades would taper off.
But, it turns out the Gore sex saga continues, this time with an incident from the late 1970s or early ’80s, when he allegedly rented a motel room as a young Tennessee congressman to watch pornography. Gore was already married at the time.
In Craig Shirley’s book “Rendezvous with Destiny: Reagan and the Campaign That Changed America,” Shirley writes about the incident in a chapter on Paul Corbin, who was a national political operative at the time.
“[Corbin] was always looking for compromising material on politicians,” Shirley told Yeas & Nays.
And that’s exactly what Corbin found when he spoke with the motel desk clerk at the Cookeville motel where Gore stayed. For a little bit of cash, the desk clerk gave Corbin a receipt that showed Gore had rented porn on pay-per-view.
In the meantime, Tipper Gore was busy forming the Parents Music Resource Center, an organization that fought for warning labels on music, including music they considered “porn rock.” The PMRC claimed rock music was causing the decay of the nuclear family in America.
One of the songs the group listed on the “Filthy Fifteen” (a list of the most objectionable songs of the time) and the song said to have initially started Tipper’s interest in the issue of record labeling was Prince’s “Darling Nikki.”
The songs lyrics include the lines “I knew a girl named Nikki. I guess you could say she was a sex fiend. I met her in a hotel lobby. Masturbating with a magazine”
Looks like that one hit a little too close to home.
When contacted for comment Gore spokeswoman Kalee Kreider told Yeas & Nays, “I am not going to comment on such utter hogwash.”
Contributed by Jesse McLean
